[Development of academic clinical neurology in Europe; a successful concept and its consequences]

Abstract

Clinical medicine in the 18th century is devoted to Hippocratic tradition. Pathology is not a requisite in this concept. The viewpoint of the pathologists is obscured by traditional philosophy and hampered by insufficient methods. In the 19th century, concepts of correlation between clinical signs and local organ pathology occur. The catastrophic increase of traumatic injury of the nervous system during world war I results in better concepts of clinical localization. At the beginning of the 21st century, the traditional view of the neurological science has changed the image of the patient profoundly, by the emergence of new diseases, disappearance of others and an altered view of the traditional neurologist.